Ancestor Stones (7 page)

I am woken by a sound like a buffalo's roar. All around me people are standing, getting to their feet. I scramble up, crane my neck. Nothing. I am too close to the ground.

‘Haidera! Haidera!'

Now I see him. Standing high up above the crowd on a platform: a man whose robes billow around him, even more full than those of my father, but plain, entirely unadorned. He wears a white turban. Around his neck an amulet swings on a leather cord.

‘Allahu Akbar!'

‘Akbar Allahu!'

People bow down, snatch handfuls of sand from the ground, rubbing their hands one over the other as though in water. Ahead I see my father wipe his hands across his face. He bows, kneels. My mother next to me, she does the same. I keep my eyes fixed upon my father as we pray under Haidera's command: standing, bending, kneeling, stretching our necks like herons to touch our foreheads to the ground. The movements, the pattern, the rhythm, they are just like a dance.

Now we stop praying and listen to Haidera, whose voice is as thin and high as a bird's, and like a bird's it floats across the air so that even the people at the back can hear. He doesn't speak the way we do, but with an accent from somewhere else.

‘I Am the Man Sent to All Worshippers in the Name of God to Tell You the Prophecies of Muhammad. My Song is Alla, Alla.'

Haidera talks. The sun arcs across the sky. It is hard to sit still so long. People cheer when he warns of false Mohammedans who come to trick us and take our money. They cheer again when he promises to stop them and to kill any who refuse to leave. The black-clad Shekunas carry sticks and short swords. I don't doubt what he says is true. He tells us the terrible things that await those who do not follow Annabi. For them the rivers will drain into the soil, the rice harvest fail. His bird's voice rises to a shriek, like the call of a peacock.

‘Those Who Will Be Saved Are Only the True Muslims.'

I touch my mama's sleeve. She is wearing her best gown and she is beautiful. I pull her finger. I ask her if we are to Be Saved. Yes, she tells me and slides her hand out from beneath mine, strokes the back of my hand lightly.

I turn my head this way and that to look at the people listening to the preacher. People who come to Be Saved. People who have come to Be Healed, because that is what they say Haidera can do. There are families like ours, men with their wives and children. Here and there a lame leg stiffly extended; a gaunt figure propped up by the shoulders; a child's inert frame wrapped in blankets; eyes
that are opaque and unblinking. At the back are the beggars. Some have limbs that are missing. Others have limbs that are too big or too small. Some have limbs that are falling off. And there are poor people, who sit on the dry earth with none of the comforts we have brought with us: lined faces, scant clothing, lean and scarred bodies.

A way off: four people. Different from everyone else. Legs straight, hands clasped behind their backs. Standing when everyone else is sitting. And when the time comes to pray they alone do not kneel. Short-sleeved shirts and short trousers. Red round caps. Court Messengers who work for the
pothos
. There is one who comes to our village sometimes. The people greet him, but rarely invite him to eat. Sometimes my father calls for my mother to serve him a meal and I help her carry it out to where he sits on a stool outside the meeting house. He talks to my father and leaves again soon after. The Black White Man, they call him.

Out in front my father nods. There are sins Haidera has seen here with his own eyes. Big eyes, with lines above and beneath. ‘Promiscuousness.' Drawing the word out, turning it into four words. Prom. Isc. Uous. Ness! His mouth snaps shut on the end of the word, the tongue disappears with a flick like a tail into a hole. My father bobs his head. ‘Slander.' Bob, goes my father's head again. ‘Blasphemy.' Bob. ‘Greed.' Bob. ‘Envy.' Bob, bob. And my father looks around him now. His chin lifted slightly. ‘Gambling, cheating.' My father nods firmly. ‘Usury.' This time he doesn't nod. ‘Excessive polygamy.' The preacher's voice whistles, sibilant, trembling. Something shifts in the air.

Ya Namina, of course; Ya Isatta Numokho; Sakie, my own mother; Ya Jeneba and Ya Sallay Kamara, Tenkamu, whose family name I never knew. Memso and Saffie, who are still young and under the tutelage of Ya Namina. My father's wives are gathered around him with the exception of two who are new mothers. They have returned to their families and are not expected back until the children are weaned, two years from now. We are all here. My father sits at the head of us.

But I don't have time to think any more about that. A ripple runs through the mass of people near the platform. The crowd splits
apart. A man stumbles forward like a shipwrecked sailor thrown up on the sand. In his hands he holds a carved wooden statue. Other people follow. Each holding a figure, sometimes more than one. They lay them down in front of the platform. A mound rises. Some people turn and bow to Haidera. One man prostrates himself, the whole length of his person pressed to the ground, and stays there until two of the Shekunas heave him up by the arms. The crowd roars as each new supplicant comes forward.

Up on tiptoe I can see Haidera pacing back and forth. Now his disciples are taking carvings from people and throwing them on the pile. I can barely hear what he is saying. He gesticulates, points up at the sky with his left hand, his voice rises and falls. A few words carry above the noise of the crowd. He is talking about Blasphemy and Native Idols. The preacher bites into his lip, emphasises the word Native, the way he did when he talked about Promiscuousness. As though it were something Rancid.

From behind, a shout. I swivel round. A man dashes out of one of the houses around the square. In one hand he is holding a small soapstone figure, the ones the farmers bury in the fields when they plant the first seed. In the other hand he clutches a string of beads. He is wheeling around like a kite in the sky, like a crazy man. Now two more are rapping on the door of another house. No answer. They push at the door, which opens easily. In and out. More men join in. Not Shekunas. Those ones watch but do nothing. Ordinary men. Forcing their way into shops and homes, whooping every time they find an old god to confiscate.

Whose houses they are I cannot tell you, because nobody dares to utter a challenge. The mob tears around the square and down an empty side street, out of view. There are sounds: the rush of feet, splintering wood, the echo of voices.

The fire blazes into the night. Nobody goes near it. You might think it was a stinking cesspool instead of a warm fire on a cool, bright night. A night when the stars have come out to watch the earth. Nobody warms their hands. Nobody borrows a brand for their cooking fire. Nobody pushes a yam into the embers. Instead men with long sticks poke around in the ashes. And where they
find a statue or a figure that has survived the heat, they set about smashing it into powder.

Some pieces went missing. I don't know.

I know it was after Haidera. But how long after, this I cannot tell you — a day, a month, a year; these measures of time change constantly when you are a child. Sometimes a day is longer than a year. Sometimes a month is shorter than an hour. I wish I could remember.

Mama stopped making snuff.

My sisters and I tried to make the snuff instead. We searched for the pestle and mortar and ground the tobacco,
lubi
, cloves. Mama lay on the bed, a distracted presence. Did not watch us or answer our questions. She had lain there many days. Only sometimes she rose, went to her box and pulled out her possessions, sat on the floor surrounded by strewn clothing. Other times she slept. We took over her duties, cooking and carrying the food down to the plantation workers. We told nobody, except Pa Foday. We said she suffered from the fever, though it was not the time of year. Between us no mention was made of it; we dared not look at each other. Instead we shared out the tasks, uncomplaining. For once, no bickering.

But the snuff gave us away. We did not have our mother's special knowledge of the precise amounts, the balance between the ingredients. I carried it to Madam Bah, who coughed for a long time, then stepped out from behind her counter and followed me to our room. We, my mother's daughters, waited outside. After a short while Madam Bah went to Ya Namina's house next to the mosque, and together they returned and went into mama's room.

From that day we ate our meals in Ya Namina's house.

Mama was sick. Nobody could heal her. So she went in search of a cure of her own. The door to her room left standing open. Dressed only in an old gown. Hair uncovered and loose, standing out at every angle, like the dolls we made with sticks and goats' hair. She rose from her bed and walked out of the village.

When a person dies our people cry and sing. The drums sound. The house is home to many visitors. When my mother went away
there was silence. My father's house was still. The silence slid down the mud walls. Great drops stretching slowly from the eaves, smothering the thoughts that hung in the air. It clotted every crevice. It rose in the back of my throat when I tried to ask about my mother, and threatened to make me retch. It filled the house until we could no longer open our mouths for fear of drowning in it.

My father, in order to avoid being drowned, went away on business with his sixth wife.

And this same time was when the dancing stopped. The steps followed mama when she walked out of the village. She went, leaving behind everything, even her name. So I wrapped it in longing and kept it for her.

Clouds spread over the sky. Overripe fruit drops from the trees at night and morning brings the smell of wet earth and the sweet stink of rotting flesh. The river is dammed. The water rises. After dark, house-children — black-eyed geckoes — feast on swarms of mosquitoes.

I was sharing a plate of rice with my sisters at the back of Ya Namina's house when mama's ghost walked back into the village. Three people saw her with their own eyes. Salia Bangura and his woman had argued and he was late that morning. She walked past them both without a word of greeting. The alpha was shaving with a piece of broken mirror on the steps of the mosque. Over his shoulder he saw the figure of a woman, dripping with dew. Afterwards he pointed at the shattered glass, dropped in fright. Old man Bangura, spoiling for a fight he could win, began an argument over whether a ghost would possess a reflection. Nobody could agree. What they did agree on was this: spirit or mortal man, it walked straight up the main road towards our father's house.

We heard them shout and dropped our plate. We ran with greasy mouths and fingers. But by the time we reached the place where the three of them stood with open mouths, she had vanished.

The next time I see her for myself.

Up the river mangroves crowd the banks. There we like to dive into the muddy waters and pull oysters from the tangled roots. Below, the river spreads out, glistening green, weed streaming just below the surface like a witch's hair. Here boulders are scattered across the sand, black pearls at a Tuareg woman's throat. It is morning, raining. Drops of rain splash on to the water, as though on to a scalding pan. Steam rises from the bottomless below. Insects race along the surface of the water, escaping on pinpoint feet. It was once my favourite place. I used to come here and dig fish out of the mud, fish with no fins and bulging eyes.

At first I don't notice her, standing half hidden in the shadows on the sharp line where the trees meet the river, in front of the abandoned fishing hut. Her hair is scattered about her shoulders in tangled ropes. Her dress is tattered, torn at the neck so it hangs down like a flap of skin. One breast is naked, tilted up, pointing at the sky. She is watching me.

I climb down from the rock, slowly. Afraid of startling her. She is so very still.

‘Mama,' I cry. I start to run. She jerks slightly. Takes a step towards me, extending clasped hands, like she is begging me for something, imploring me. ‘Mama,' I run faster, I catch my foot on a rock. She steps into the sunlight.

That day some boys from the village on the opposite bank had crossed to set some traps on our side. Now they see her.

‘Hai! Hai!' One of them bends to pick up a stone.

‘Leave her alone!' But I'm too late. Like a hounded stray my mother cowers, starts to back off. She is gone before the stone hits the branch of a nearby tree. A shower of splintering bark and leaves. I race to the boy nearest me and push him in the chest. Hard with the heels of my hands.

‘She's a crazy woman,' he touches his temple and laughs loudly, ‘Craz-y. Let her go from here.'

I run after her. I run behind the fisherman's hut. She is nowhere. Inside the hut a tree grows through the middle, out through the roofless roof. The mud is crumbling away from the walls, leaving
wooden poles exposed like ribs. Inside there is a place on the floor, like the warm spot underfoot where a chicken has roosted for a while.

Pa Foday: he brought my mother back. As soon he came back from the plantation and heard the news. Without even a lamp, he searched all night until he found her. I remember that night because of the dry thunder. The lightning lit up the sky as bright as day. I prayed it would help Pa Foday.

And it did. He walked into the village leading her gently. And my mother walked behind him as though she had only just learned how, as though the soles of her feet were tender as a newborn's and had never touched the ground.

Pans of boiling water. Balls of soap. Comb. Clarified palm oil. Fresh clothes. Under the supervision of Ya Namina the two junior wives entered and left the chamber where they kept my mother. We waited outside like we had the time before. Later I heard them whispering to each other at the back of the house. But when they saw me hovering close by they stopped talking. They stood up and walked away, gathering their
lappas
around them, as if to cover their indiscretion. Little hurried steps. Shuffle, shuffle.